Rogozhin
 | |
| Discord | @jit |
|---|---|
| [1] | |
| Metatype | Human |
| Street Cred | 0 |
| Notoriety | 0 |
| Public Awareness | 0 |
| CDP | 0 |
| D.O.B. | January 17, 2063 |
| Age | 23 |
| Folder | [2] |
| Priority | Metatype - E Attributes - B Magic - A Skills - E Resources - B |
| Initiation Counter | NAN |
| Initiations to Date | TBA |
| Theme Song | Baby - Iggy Pop |
Character Information
Summary
CONTENT WARNING: ANIMAL ABUSE, DEATH, AND ENSLAVEMENT
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH HE'S A REALLY NOT GREAT GUY
LIKE HE HAS REASONS BUT THEY'RE NOT GOOD ONES Y'KNOW?
ANYWAY THANKS FOR STOPPING IN PLEASE LOOK AT SOME OF MY NICER CHARACTERS INSTEAD LIKE BUNNY HOP OR SAINT (SORT OF)
WIP
Goals
WIP
Background
Before Vakhrov Fyodorovich's father was face down and charred black in a shallow and unmarked grave, he was a good person, or so Rogozhin is told. In those days, nobody in that remote Saskatchewan town yet knew the name Pyotr Volkovi, the man who would one day bring hell and prosperity to their frosted wastes. It was then only a waiting grave where slighted Vory went to rot in shameful reassignment, a town of fleeting ghosts with fleeting profit.
Ivan Fyodorovich, a man of principle, prided himself on such things. The White Vory, unlike their bootlicker cousins of the Red, adhere to principle. Pride and people. To that end, such methods that cater exclusively to the rich and powerful of the ruling caste are distasteful - at least to those who remember the time of Boris Kropunin and the purge of their ranks. For a new and rising White however, the old ways are inadequate. Gambling dens and smuggling rings only go so far, the Peoples' vices though they are.
So it was that he was reassigned, isolated, and forgotten in Saskatchewan along the border of Athabaska. He was nonetheless content. A meager cabin that freezes in the Winter, his son, Vakhrov, growing equally cold, and his pride were all he needed to keep warm.
So it was that this was the world that gave rise to Pyotr Volkovi's ambitious and treacherous bid toward power. With a knife in his sovetnik's back, Ivan suddenly found himself on the losing side of a swift and brutal power struggle. His son, a growing young boy entering the sunrise of his adolescence, watched with cold and desperate calculation, and Ivan, the self-assured light of his life, promised to show him how a man with principle objects.
He gathered what few loyalists to the previous sovetnik remained, and went to Pyotr. The smuggling ring, they told him, catered exclusively to the bourgeoisie. The circus a trite and ostentatious bid toward only those with influence and allegiance to the power of the state. His methods brusque and without humanity, disgusting, abominable. These are the methods of the Red. Though they operate with ruthless efficiency, they do so without bending their knees to make kissing ass that much easier. They give him a chance to reconsider his direction, or else they will walk.
Each of them are killed in their sleep.
A wind like ice cuts through young Vakhrov Fyodorovich's hair. Whatever tears he might have shed freeze and are whisked away as swiftly as they might be formed. The two enforcers share a cigarette outside the front door as his father's warm blood trickles down bed posts - they share only mildly concerned glances at his child staring lightlessly at his corpse.
Vakhrov can only wonder how he might ever have been related to such an idiot.
The two enforcers trade words in Russian - one tells the other to fetch a shovel, who insists the ground is too frozen for such a thing tonight. The body won't spoil in weather like this. They can come back in the light and warmth, the morning after, with everything they need to bag the popsicle. The other, an ork who glances sympathetically to the young boy he still assumes must be in shock, tells him that it's cruel to leave his kid like that. Killing him too, he punctuates with a vindictive flick against his forehead, is not the mercy they will deal tonight. Drive back and get a post hole digger. The kid's fending for himself now, at the very least don't let his dad watch.
Vakhrov coldly watches them leave, turns to their closet, and drags a shovel outside. By the time the two return, his father is alight in orange flame and black smoke, swallowed in a shallow ditch of a grave. An empty gasoline can lies tossed to the side.
"[I burned him,]" he tells the two as they return, eyes bound to the flame. "[Like you do at the carnival. With the creatures who misbehave.]"
He turns to them, and the only light inside is that which is reflected from his father's remains.
"[Tell Pyotr Volkovi that I will be a sharper knife than my idiot father, one that will cut and stab when it is told, if he will keep me fed and warm tonight. If I will not be discarded like him.]"
Mercifully, if spitefully, Pyotr Volovi deigns to grant him clemency, though what use for a boy but what his idle hands might grasp? If he is so fond of digging graves, they have use for him yet amongst the woods. He is instructed in the art - six feet deep, and charred to a crisp. While only some believe in superstition, all follow the folk practice of the region under pain of death. When he asks why, they tell him only that it is so the bodies do not come back.
He digs. He buries beasts of all sizes, first light to last. He reads by flickering lamplight hours into the evening, and he wakes up at dawn to do it again. He will, occasionally, gopher letters or small goods to lesser mobsters, and though his rations are cold and his accommodations harsh, he is a useful enough tool to be kept in Pyotr Volkovi's shed.
The man himself does not address him. When he is out and entertaining his high class clientele, young Vakhrov watches his daughter, a glimmering jewel amidst ruin, a fallen snowflake among dirt. She is captivating in unspeakable ways, on a spectrum he is only beginning to grasp - and she is sublime, and artistry, and sad, and it is this that lights some dark flame in his heart. He does not understand the misery of a tool kept pristine while his hands blister and bleed. A tool meant only to bury other, broken tools cannot sympathize with one so decorative and meant to spark joy. He watches her from below - he admires her, and he hates her, and he loves her, and he admonishes her, and these emotions he swallows, for none of them make him sharp. Even on those days he is permitted to watch the performance, he is banished to the woods when they are through to dig their holes and burn their dead.
Pyotr Volkovi, innovator, one day seeks to create more unique and impossible acts to draw his clientele. He schemes to smuggle CAST and STIRRUP systems, and to source reputable veterinarians and cyberware surgeons to install them into his more exotic beasts. The minds of beasts can only comprehend so much by traditional means, and only so quickly - for the fastest, most dramatic results, a human mind must be present behind bestial eyes.
It is a disgusting and abhorrent thing, and none so quickly volunteer to be its steward as Vakhrov Fyodorovich, now fifteen summers old.
He takes his implant, and finds his vision dimmed, as though a nerve has been pinched, and he does not quite yet know why. Volkovi's jewel dims like a sun behind clouds, and those clouds that gather above his mass graves become the fuzzy greys of overcast drizzles. He does not mind, whatever that means. He is more valuable now, and will not be discarded so easily.
He learns to rig, and jumps into these creatures, and sees from behind their eyes. Each performance Zhizhn Volkovi attends, she is regarded sharply, distantly, by those beasts leaping through hoops, walking on tightrope, and flipping into handstands. Their eyes are cold and intelligent, moreso than trained beasts' usually are. Whether she knows the truth or not, Vakhrov Fyodorovich cannot help but regard her with mirthless jealousy.
When he is not performing, he is again digging graves. He forces animals whose bodies he experiences as his own into cages, bleeding and hungry, and burying eyes he had himself seen through when they fall. Sometimes, as he waits for more fuel, or finds his hands raw and unwilling to work, he waits by their carcasses. He imagines himself in their place, behind their eyes once more, stinking and stiff.
With time, he eventually comes to know that he is not alone in contemplating their shared and inevitable fates. Horrible and rotting clouds lay claim to that cloyingly spoiled meat alongside him. He is barely afraid. Commiserating with those phantoms, he tells them he too has seen the world from behind those now dead eyes, and in this, they are bonded on pleasant terms. Occasionally, he intentionally leaves those bodies uncharred long enough for those phantoms to join him in flesh - in exchange, he asks only that they come when they are called, should he ever have need of them.
He studies the tenants of binding those ancient philosophers of before have laid out for him to find, in the fleeting light before he is himself interred in his lukewarm cubby. These too, he finds, specters of death and life remade, might be forged as tools to make him valuable. He does not question why only he may see these phantoms. To question his fortune does not cross his mind.
[Neznayka escapes the circus by tipping off TerraFirst and enabling a raid. He helps in the efforts to fight them off, rigging into creatures, binding and bargaining with spirits, experimenting with those few spells his reading has given to him. It is enough to make him marked by the ecoterrorists, and to rise to a position beyond the needs of the circus in the White Vory as Pyotr Volkovi seeks to regain his stolen daughter and re-establish himself in bigger places with bigger opportunity.]
[Now seeks Zhizhn Volkovi in Seattle, after receiving several tips about her whereabouts Spray, Pray, and Co-Pay, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Bear and The Bear and the Nightingale, along with her other various runs building street cred.]
Narrative Significant Qualities
Positive
- Everything is a Tool - (Spectral Warden / Restricted Gear [CAST]) - When you are born into the lesser caste of a brutal syndicate, you very swiftly learn the value of your life, and especially the lives of those around you. All creatures, Man, Beast, and Spirit alike, are tools to be honed and used in the climb toward freedom. The only way to not be used is to use in turn.
Negative
- Sort of a Mess - (Disheveled) - He's not very well put together, having spent a childhood cold, alone, and hopping various bodies with only snarls, spirits, and the distant glimmer of a dark and taunting star to guide him. Law of the wild, and the style of it too.
- Muted - (Reduced Sense [Astral Sight]) - The cold numbs all senses, and it clings to him wherever he goes. For a mage with such potential, he is not in touch with the world beyond. Whether this is unfortunate genetics, a spiritual failure, or depression clouding his sight, who can say.
- Winning the Rat Race - (Driven [Rise to Power, Escape the Role of "Tool"]) - He will wield others as they have wielded him, as it's the only way to seize his destiny for himself. For practical purposes in the short term, this means turning Neznayka over to Pyotr Volkovi for the boost in rank in the White Vory.
- The Eco Terrorist's Terrorist - (Wanted [ TerraFirst!, 25,000]) - He has done unspeakable things to animals in the name of Pyotr Volkovi and the White Vory, and unspeakable things to their own eco warriors as well, during the extraction of Zhizhn Volkovi.
- Prideful - (Poor Self Control [Vindictive]) - He tries to be calm, but there is only so much abuse his pride can take.
Run History
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Affiliations
Contacts
| Contact | Connection | Loyalty | Archetype | Profession | Aspects | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Akilina Mikhailov | 4 | 4 | Fixer | Chrome Enthusiast Fixer | Eccentric Equipment Enthusiast, Cyber-Fashionista, Kovert Ops, The Drug Trade, Tattoo Artist | Even |
| Father Midnight | 5 | 2 | Fixer(G,N,K,A) | Underworld, Undead, Undertaker, Underground, Reaper's Harvest, Forensics | Even |
Relationships with NPCs
- Akilina Mikhailov: Grateful for the help, although wary of such a creep. Rising sovetnik Pyotr Volkovi vouches for him however, and his eclectic talents and unorthodox knowledge make him suitable for strange and esoteric needs of the Vory. He's also not so unpleasant to be around, once you get to know him, or so she says.
- Father Midnight: A useful hookup for parts of bodies and corpses, as well as necromantic reagents. Father Midnight holds out hope for the young spectral warden to see the error in his ways and become a steward of death, rather than make a doomed effort toward becoming its would-be master.
Organizations and Reputation
Allies
| Faction | Reputation | Related Run(s) |
|---|---|---|
| White Vory | 0 | TBD |
Enemies
| Faction | Reputation | Related Run(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Red Vory | 0 | TBD |
| TerraFirst! | 0 | TBD |
Street Cred
- N/A
Notoriety
- N/A
In Character Information
Symbols and Signatures
Matrix Search Table
| Threshold | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Junk: Spark Notes and Study Guides dissecting the characters and themes in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot. One such character, Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, is often cited as a symbol of permanent death, irredeemability, and moral decay, in contrast to the Christ-like Prince Myshkin.
Several posts in local community groups and neighborhood watch associations warning about a strange cloaked figure driving a suspicious van, often seen in areas with missing pet populations. His dog, though calm, holds an eerie and uncanny intelligence behind its blank eyes. If the man is confronted, he smiles and only introduces himself as Rostasya Romanov. |
| 3 | WIP |
| 6 | WIP |
Shadow Community Table
| Threshold | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | WIP |
| 3 | WIP |
| 5 | WIP |
Assensing Table
Description of his aura.
| Threshold | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | WIP |
| 2 | WIP |
| 3 | WIP |
| 4 | WIP |
| 5 | WIP |
SINs
Rostya Romanov (Fake Rating 4, UCAS)
- Driving License (Rating 4)
Appearance
Clothing
Matrix Persona
WIP
Tokens
Character Plot Hooks
Here are characteristics of the character that GMs may take advantage of to add complications to runs, or to otherwise use when in use. If you want to use them in unrelated to runs, please ask first.
| Aspect | Information | Related Run(s) |
|---|---|---|
| TBD | WIP | WIP |
Media Mentions
Note
I am completely fine with long term consequences for my characters, as long as it doesn't feel unannounced or forced. Long term changes to a character make more opportunities for interesting roleplay, and so don't be afraid to give them out if they are deserved.